Lazy Summer Afternoon and New Fish Farm

Friday night shooting clay pigeons, feasting at the burger barge, midnight poker, and then gorging on some more pizza all kind of set the stage for a couple of consecutive lazy summer afternoons. My oh my has it been a long time since I have done anything like that and boy oh boy am I still feeling it on Monday.

There is just something about laying down to sleep and then waking up a few minutes later to go fishing at 5 am that just made me awful tired. So tired that a good nights sleep saturday evening didnt even help quench my thirst for more Z's.

Anyhow I spent all day Sunday at the lake and it was almost too hot outside to nap comfortably. Here are some pics from Saturday evening fishing trip with Ken Hoerr and his family. We had alot of fun catching hybrid striped bass and even more fun getting everyone to hold one for some pics:

For those who don't know, Ken is one of the preachers at our church. I wasn't in church on Sunday but was told from a few different people that me and fishing and our fishing trip the day before were tied into his sermon for the morning service. Interesting to say the least....kind of makes me a bit worried for some reason though to be talked about over the pulpit?

Sunday afternoon my dad and I sneaked away for a bit and caught a whole bunch of catfish and some real nice bluegills and bass. We used jigheads tipped with 1 inch pieces of night crawlers. This is bass number 39 that was stocked from Arkansas in 2008. Look at the body size compared to the mouth size of this fish! Relative weight is 143%!


This male bluegill is an absolute monster! Probably one of the biggest bluegill I have ever caught:

Lots of cool stuff happening at Herman Brothers Pond Management! I just purchased this big building with 10 acres of land and plan on starting my very own fish farm here in central Illinois! Feed trained smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, and hybrid striped bass will be my main species that I will focus on raising. I will also have lots of holding tanks in the building for big shipments of fish from arkansas and minnesota. I already bring in big truckloads of every size and species of fish every spring and fall, but now will start raising my own specialty fish with a huge focus on making my own genetics. Gonna be lots of fun!

Here is a pic of the building and the land.